WotC Mike Mearls: "D&D Is Uncool Again"

In Mike Mearls' recent interview with Ben Riggs, he talks about how he feels that Dungeons & Dragons has had its moment, and is now uncool again. Mearls was one of the lead designers of D&D 5E and became the franchise's Creative Director in 2018. He worked at WotC until he was laid off in 2023. He is now EP of roleplaying games at Chaosium, the publisher of Call of Chulhu.

My theory is that when you look back at the OGL, the real impact of it is that it made D&D uncool again. D&D was cool, right? You had Joe Manganiello and people like that openly talking about playing D&D. D&D was something that was interesting, creative, fun, and different. And I think what the OGL did was take that concept—that Wizards and this idea of creativity that is inherent in the D&D brand because it's a roleplaying game, and I think those two things were sundered. And I don’t know if you can ever put them back together.

I think, essentially, it’s like that phrase: The Mandate of Heaven. I think fundamentally what happened was that Wizards has lost the Mandate of Heaven—and I don’t see them even trying to get it back.

What I find fascinating is that it was Charlie Hall who wrote that article. This is the same Charlie Hall who wrote glowing reviews of the 5.5 rulebooks. And then, at the same time, he’s now writing, "This is your chance because D&D seems to be stumbling." How do you square that? How do I go out and say, "Here are the two new Star Wars movies. They’re the best, the most amazing, the greatest Star Wars movies ever made. By the way, Star Wars has never been weaker. Now is the time for other sci-fi properties", like, to me that doesn’t make any sense! To me, it’s a context thing again.

Maybe this is the best Player’s Handbook ever written—but the vibes, the audience, the people playing these games—they don’t seem excited about it. We’re not seeing a groundswell of support and excitement. Where are the third-party products? That’s what I'd ask. Because that's what you’d think, "oh, there’s a gap", I mean remember before the OGL even came up, back when 3.0 launched, White Wolf had a monster book. There were multiple adventures at Gen Con. The license wasn’t even official yet, and there were already adventures showing up in stores. We're not seeing that, what’s ostensibly the new standard going forward? If anything, we’re seeing the opposite—creators are running in the opposite direction. I mean, that’s where I’m going.

And hey—to plug my Patreon—patreon.com/mikemearls (one word). This time last year, when I was looking at my post-Wizards options, I thought, "Well, maybe I could start doing 5E-compatible stuff." And now what I’m finding is…I just don’t want to. Like—it just seems boring. It’s like trying to start a hair metal band in 1992. Like—No, no, no. Everyone’s mopey and we're wearing flannel. It's Seattle and rain. It’s Nirvana now, man. It’s not like Poison. And that’s the vibe I get right now, yeah, Poison was still releasing albums in the ’90s. They were still selling hundreds of thousands or a million copies. But they didn’t have any of the energy. It's moved on. But what’s interesting to me is that roleplaying game culture is still there. And that’s what I find fascinating about gaming in general—especially TTRPGs. I don’t think we’ve ever had a period where TTRPGs were flourishing, and had a lot of energy and excitement around them, and D&D wasn’t on the upswing. Because I do think that’s what’s happening now. We’re in very strange waters where I think D&D is now uncool.

 

[Maxperson]

I think setting up challenges and running a combat as neutral referee is different from setting up challenges and running combat as a DM actively trying to foil and defeat players... I think it's why OSR philosophy heavily favors the referee approach.

If you set up a challenge in the path of their goals as you are supposed to do and they fail, you have both foiled and defeated the players.

That's what happens.

No adversarial DM involves the DM trying to actively defeat the PC's as opposed to being a neutral arbiter of the game and its mechanics. It has nothing to do with taking it personally and their are games that have constraints built into their mechanics to allow a DM to be adversarial without it ruining game play.

No. You can be both neutral and try to defeat the players and their goals per game instruction via the normal challenges the DM's job has DMs use.

I mean, it's not the best language to use, but you have to pretty blatantly ignore the desire for impartial(disinterested) resolution mechanics Mearls said were good in order to think he was talking about adversarial DMing.

But hey, if you want to continue to misconstrue what he said, nobody here can stop you.

 

[Maxperson]

This that you posted is straightforward but it's not what Mearls posted or what was being discussed...

Yes. Yes it is. At least if you make half an effort to understand the context of the entire post and not just twist one sentence out of context.

 

[Maxperson]

This is how I interpreted @mearls conments.

It's the reasonable interpretation within the context of his entire statement. It seems there are a handful of folks with some sort of beef that just refuse to look at and understand the context he used.

 

[Imaro]

It's the reasonable interpretation within the context of his entire statement. It seems there are a handful of folks with some sort of beef that just refuse to look at and understand the context he used.

Or we read words and take them at face value vs. the handful of posters writing out page long explanations full of things he didn't actually post to justify their assumptuons.

 

[mamba]

Basically, constant tension isn't great, as players will start to (naturally) rebel against it, which generally (IME) means making jokes or tuning out. In the Mythic solo RPG engine, the Chaos Factor, which is largely responsible for introducing randomness and increasing danger, goes up and down depending on the player's rolls. The player rolls well, the CF goes down.

I don’t think there is much buildup here though. The goal seems to be able to have quick sessions, 1h, maybe 1.5, not 3-4h, and from my understanding the counter starts fresh each session. You roll 1d6 after 10min, 2d6 after 20, and so forth to a max of 6d6, if at least one is a 6, something negative and minor happens, the more 6s, the more severe. If 1s do become bonuses for the player, then the whole thing just gets slightly more dynamic and interesting imo, it’s not a countdown to inevitable doom.

Adding a bit of tension and dynamics / unpredictability is not a bad thing imo

 

[Maxperson]

I didn't leave it off, there was no 4) the 'disinterested mechanics' is further up in the quote


We have encounter building rules, I would consider this to be part of the disinterested mechanics. Curious whether Mike means more than that and how he implements it

I don't see how it can be disinterested mechanics when 1) the encounter rules are super vague, and 2) you can make encounters as hard as you like via those rules since a lot depends on DM decisions. The DM who wants to be adversarial can use the rules as written to up the difficulty to an auto TPK.

 

[Maxperson]

Or we read words and take them at face value vs. the handful of posters writing out page long explanations full of things he didn't actually post to justify their assumptuons.

You can't take them at face value and focus on that once sentence like that. If you did take them all at face value, you'd know from the context that he can't be suggesting adversarial play. That or he's lying in the rest of his post. Which do you think it is?

 

[Faolyn]

How exactly does one become aware that the DM is adversarial? And until we know, should we not presume that they aren't?

Accumulated evidence. Nobody is saying that you go into your first game with a GM and assume they're the bad guy. Unless they tell you about their previous games and their stories set off alarm bells, of course. Instead, you play with someone for a while and realize they suck.

For instance, the GM punishes PCs who go against their very specific storyline (especially if there's a DMPC involved). If the GM is particularly hostile towards a player who picked a race or class they don't like. If the GM sets up impossible-to-overcome obstacles--like, you say you search the room, but because you didn't specifically say you search each individual floor tile, you don't find the trap, even if you rolled insanely high. If the GM consistently ignores lines and veils, especially if they do so under the pretext that including them is "therapeutic" in some way. If the GM punishes PCs for out-of-game issues (or vice versa). If the GM seems to like killing off or torturing PCs a leeeetle too much. If the GM chooses to ignore or rewrite parts of a PC's background without the player's consent or knowledge.

Things like that.

 

[mamba]

Or we read words and take them at face value

your at face value is his out of context… maybe take the whole post at face value and not just one sentence within it

 

[mamba]

I don't see how it can be disinterested mechanics when 1) the encounter rules are super vague, and 2) you can make encounters as hard as you like via those rules since a lot depends on DM decisions.

they say what encounter is easy / medium / hard and assume you have a reasonable DM. If you do not assume the DM to be reasonable then I am not sure what rules could safeguard against that, at a minimum rule 0 has to go and everything else has to be a lot more strict. The rules would basically have to say what the DM is allowed to do in any given situation